The Were Witch Complete Series Omnibus

by Renée Jaggér

  Thoth extrapolated further. “It occurred to us, and we discussed that the trainees would make excellent reserve soldiers if need be. Balder has overseen them before, and since most of them are demigods, half-breeds, or full deities who’ve not yet learned to use their powers, each is nearly as powerful as we are. One would be the equal of many dozen warriors of the monstrous species in a fight. We opted not to squander their potential.”

  The girl nodded. “Good, okay. Knowing he might be at the training grounds is a start. I’ve been there before and can portal to the place on my own. No one will be too shocked to see me, I think, but I’ll keep a low profile at first in case you-know-who is around.”

  Coyote smiled. “You have learned a thing or two, haven’t you? The old Bailey would have barged in guns blazing, wouldn’t she have?”

  “Hey,” Roland objected, “we snuck into those warehouses when we were rescuing the kidnapped Were-girls. You guys weren’t around for that, but I can confirm, as an independent witness, that it happened.”

  “Roland,” Bailey added, turning to her lover, “no offense, but I want you to stay behind.”

  He blinked at her. “What? Why? Yes, you’re more powerful than I am, but I’m getting kinda tired of you running off and leaving me to worry about you for a random stretch of time.”

  She ruffled his hair. “Yeah, I know, you’ll miss me. And the feeling’s mutual. But all I need to do is scout and see if Balder’s around, and I can do that by myself. If there is any serious danger, there’s no point in risking your ass alongside mine. We’d be better served by keeping you around here. People know, like, and trust you, and you have experience with rallying and marshaling them when that kind of shit is necessary. And we both know it might come to that.”

  He pouted in a way that she recognized as entirely sincere and heartfelt.

  “Fine.” He sighed. “I don’t like the idea, but I’m smart enough to grasp the logic of it. Be careful, though. And come back soon.”

  They hugged and shared a quick, discreet kiss on the lips.

  As they separated, the girl wished they didn’t have to. She would rather have stayed in his arms and spent the night with him, and all the nights after that.

  But duty called, and if the safety of their world could be purchased through her efforts, then at last, she and Roland would be together forever, inseparable. A pair, mated for life.

  Soon.

  She turned away and focused her mind on the gods’ training grounds within the Other. She recalled the place’s geography, its look and feel and smell, its vibe. She remembered the flow of its magical vibrations and visualized the place where she wanted to make her entrance.

  Then she swept her hands to each side as though pulling open the doors of a cabinet.

  An ovoid portal manifested before her. Its surface resembled slow-moving water, though it glowed dimly with the color of fine amethysts.

  The girl gave one last glance at everyone present. She double-checked to ensure that her sword, handily cloaked from sight by magic, was still strapped to her back. Then she stepped into the gateway, icy cold and dizziness engulfing her as she was propelled through the astral plane toward her destination.

  * * *

  Two figures sat, quiet and unmoving, in a shallow depression in the ground. Around them was one of the most obscure, lonely, foreboding, and unpopulated places to be found in the alternate dimension known as the Other. The Other was made from the residue of spells and arcane entities. They’d settled here over the millennia, forming an entire sub-universe.

  The region where the two men had come together was constructed specifically of the magical effluvium of beings who had died by violence.

  The ground was parched and cracked, yet listless or petrified plants grew, as well as gnarled, impassive trees and thorny vines. Most everything was the color of dried blood or pale ash. They’d found an area that could accurately be described as a forest, dead though it was, with thick-trunked trees like columns of stone, their branches clotted with crimson moss or dangling dark red leaves like strips of bloody flesh.

  Both figures were tall, though one was taller than the other, and broader of build. He wore a thick bulky coat with a hood pulled over his head. Only his nose and broad, square, stubbled jaw were visible, protruding from the shadows.

  “Ragnarök,” Fenris proclaimed. “Long prophesied and long dreaded. Sometimes dismissed, but no longer. We have passed the event horizon. It’s happening, Carl. You would not be here otherwise.”

  The other man appeared younger. He was athletic, dark-skinned, and had an air of relaxed humor about him. He was a scion, the product of a union between a goddess and a shapechanger, and long ago, he had pledged himself as an apprentice to Fenris, god of wolves. He’d arrived mere minutes ago.

  “As usual,” Carl replied, “you’re right. I am here, aren’t I?” He laughed softly. “But you’re right about the rest, too. That beautiful shining hall where the council meets will be ours. The usurpers; that’s probably what they’d call us, but they’ll be dead, so it won’t matter what they say or think.”

  Fenris sensed that his protege was deliberately holding back on delivering the full report of how his last mission had gone. He didn’t press him. He was savoring the moment, and with legs crossed and back straight, he relaxed, waiting for the scion to reveal the rest at his own pace.

  Carl’s fingers uncurled from his fist as he moved his hand to the side. Toward a slightly elevated mound of earth next to them, where a low table had been set up between two stumps serving as chairs. Atop the table was an old finely carven chessboard, with its two opposing armies lined up against one another.

  “All the pieces,” the scion pointed out, “are on the board. In place, ready to be moved.”

  Fenris smiled. “Yes. The contest will begin soon, and we have planned our game many, many moves ahead. We know how the enemy will react. Each and every step of the way, we will meet them, ready to neutralize their bungling attacks and remove their pawns. Checkmate will come soon. They will barely know what’s hit them. Shall we begin?”

  Both rose from their cross-legged positions on the hard dirt and sat instead on the stumps at each end of the small table. Carl positioned himself behind the white army, Fenris behind the black.

  They began in a fairly customary way. Moving pawns near the middle of the board, tentatively, to block one another’s movements and free up their more powerful pieces to enter the fray. Carl castled his king. Fenris did not bother, even after the space between his king and his rook lay open.

  The wolf-god looked up from the board at his apprentice. “How is our friend Balder doing? Has anything...bad happened to him?”

  Carl’s fingers closed around the head of a knight, and he answered the question as he picked it up and moved it in an L-shape over one of Fenris’ pawns to threaten his advancing bishop.

  The scion commented, “He’s lost. Hurting and on the run. I would not want to be in his position currently.”

  Fenris’ hand hovered over the dark, glossy pieces on his side of the board as he contemplated whether to move his bishop to attack another piece or whether to assail Carl’s knight with a pawn.

  “That is interesting. I would be curious to know the details of the story.” He repositioned his bishop to threaten both Carl’s advancing knight and a nearby pawn.

  Carl studied the board, making no move for now. “It seems that Balder was somehow shot with an arrow. By someone with sufficient skill and magical power to inflict serious injury on a god, of course.”

  The scion raised his eyes toward Fenris’ half-shadowed face, and his smile mimicked that of his master.

  “Ah,” said the wolf-father, “I see. An interesting rumor. I will not bother to inquire further as to who could possibly have done such a thing.”

  Since they had both agreed that it would be best to take Balder out unexpectedly and from a distance, Carl had been practicing his stealth and stalking skills and his archery.
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  However, Fenris’ smile receded somewhat as he contemplated what the scion had said a moment ago. Balder was on the run. He wasn’t dead yet, but for Carl to have returned to report the incident, he must be confident of success. Fenris had forbidden him to return with a report of failure.

  Balder was alone, therefore, and grievously and mortally wounded.

  Carl seemed to sense his mentor’s thoughts. “He will die soon. It’s only a matter of time until both the arrow and the magic take their toll on him.” He moved his knight again, closer to the black side’s king.

  Fenris took the knight with his queen and handed the piece to his mentee. “Good,” he stated.

  “He’s finished,” Carl emphasized, seizing the knight and flinging it into the woods.

  The lycanthropic deity responded with a slow nod of his head. “I am impressed. You have proven yourself worthy on many occasions, but in all honesty, I was not certain you could handle the job. It would seem that you have. Balder, still alive and free, would have posed a great threat to us. With him out of the picture, we’re one big step closer to victory.”

  Carl chuckled and shook his head. His face was slack with borderline disbelief that it was finally happening, but his eyes twinkled with mirth. “Victory. Yes. After all the time we’ve spent preparing ourselves. What is the next step, Wolf-Father?”

  “Next,” Fenris elucidated, “we begin to gradually unleash the monsters of the universe, the exiled savage peoples and slumbering behemoths, against Asgard in a series of staggered attacks.”

  This was mostly review, and the scion bobbed his head in acknowledgment. His shoulders twitched with impatience.

  “One at a time,” the wolf-god went on, “in wave after wave, they will assail the borders of the divine realm, weakening the boundaries between their territory and that of the gods, and drawing the council’s attention to them. That also means drawing attention away from us. They will fear to look away from the burgeoning wars at their gates, and as such, they will not be looking at me. I will be beside them, inside their walls. It will be easy to get things ready for the masterstroke, the moment when they drool and sputter and struggle to grasp that I have already won.”

  Fenris took Carl’s second knight with a rook, and in so doing, threatened his king. The game was not over, but it had suddenly grown more serious.

  The scion frowned as he considered his next play. “I wish I could be there with you to see it. Perhaps I will be, depending on how all the details go.”

  “Perhaps,” Fenris agreed. “Let us finish this game quickly, then make our final preparations. The End of Days—and, afterward, the Beginning—are upon us. Be ready.”

  * * *

  The icy rush died, and Bailey stepped out of the astral channel of her portal and into a grassy field. Overhead, the sun shone. Thick, beautiful, old-growth forest like something from medieval England surrounded the sward, and a castle complex rose at its center.

  She paused, looking and listening. Everything was quiet.

  Under her breath, so softly that it would have taken another lycanthrope to hear, she murmured, “Fuck me.”

  The walls and gates of the stone structure had broad scorch marks all over them as well as nicks, cracks, and gouges, as though blunt objects of great size and power had impacted them, along with fire. She couldn’t tell how recent it had happened, but the markings hadn’t been there the last time she’d seen the place.

  And the silence was eerie in its flat, dead oppressiveness. No birds, insects, or animals sang or scuffled. There were no noises of sub-deities training, fighting, or feasting, as there should have been during the daytime since this corner of the arcane dimension had a day and night cycle much like Earth’s.

  Then she did hear something: the furtive tramping of feet. It sounded like two or three large, heavy entities and many smaller ones. The sounds weren’t familiar, and she had no idea what might be making them.

  She pulled her sword off her back, allowing it to wink back into sight, then took a deep breath and plunged through the opened gates into the outer yards of the castle.

  Within, the sand and gravel of the lanes between buildings were trampled and irregular, and odd stains showed up here and there. Bailey sniffed the air, but her sensitive wolf’s nose was confused by the profusion of odors. The blood of gods and demigods must smell different from the blood of mortals.

  She rounded a corner toward the manor-hall where she had bunked during her training and found herself staring at the backs of almost two dozen monstrosities. They heard her and turned around, leering.

  Bailey raised her sword as she took in the sight.

  Three of the creatures stood around twelve feet tall. They were ungainly, misshapen beasts that roughly resembled men, though with the body proportions of apes, and they were covered with curly hair the color of dark copper. Their huge mouths were filled with rows upon rows of bent, jagged, and crooked teeth, and they hoisted weapons like stone-headed mattocks in their big, bony fists.

  The others, numbering fifteen or twenty, stood closer to three or four feet, and were similarly ghoulish-looking, though they were squatter and their skin a vaguely reptilian green. They held spears with barbed heads or crude scimitars and set to squealing and hooting at the sight of prey.

  Shit, she thought. Ogres and goblins? I don’t know if that’s what they’re officially called, but it’s damn well close enough. Let’s see if their bite matches their bark.

  The monsters charged.

  Bailey stabbed her sword skyward, summoning a bolt of lightning surrounded by a cyclone of plasma, then used the blade to direct it toward her enemies. The blazing line of death struck the front lines of the advancing horde. Two of the ogres had gotten out in front due to their longer stride, along with six or seven of the goblins, and all exploded in flaming columns of light and smoke that scattered charred debris and dust to the sides.

  The remainder of the beasts plowed ahead, jumping over the ruins of their brethren in their mindless bloodlust. Bailey drew her lips back from her teeth and plunged into them.

  She surrounded herself with an adaptive shield that protected her from the monsters’ blows or bowled them physically aside with arcane force. Meanwhile, she hacked, thrust, and sliced her way through them. The divine longsword did its grim work with smooth efficiency, splitting goblins apart two and three at a time.

  A great ogre swung its mattock at her, and she jumped and tumbled backward to avoid it. In midair, she conjured a lightning bolt that struck the beast full in the chest, causing it to go into spasms and drop its weapon while the remaining goblins piled ahead.

  Bailey landed on her feet and quickly cut down the smaller creatures, then leaped onto the ogre’s shoulders to spike her sword downwards through its skull. The blade absorbed the lingering electricity, and the giant toppled to the ground with a sighing grunt.

  The girl hopped off the body and checked for any more attackers. She’d slain them all, and no others were in immediate sight, but she thought she heard more sounds of movement from the castle’s inner courtyard.

  Where did Fenris dig these bastards up, I wonder? A flicker of cold went down her spine at the prospect of all the minions he could have recruited. Is it possible that they have nothing to do with him?

  It was, she supposed, possible...but she doubted it.

  The girl launched herself into the air again, and this time, she flew over the wall of the inner bailey so she could observe the scene from above before descending to deal with it face-to-face.

  Looking down, she saw a group of students, five of them, huddled into the corner between an outbuilding and the inner wall. Four of them appeared to be wounded and had trailed blood through the dirt as they’d tried to hide.

  Another group of monsters, three more ogres and another twenty goblins, had caught sight of them and were charging toward their pitiful hiding place to finish them off.

  “Hey!” the werewitch shouted, directing her voice straight at the
m. Both the students and the creatures moving in for the kill looked up with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  Bailey crashed into the midst of the monsters, her sword splitting the tallest ogre in half lengthwise and scattering the others with the small shockwave of her impact. She threw out a circular wave of fire that incinerated most of them while they were stunned.

  The one student who wasn’t wounded, a burly young man who might have been South Asian, rushed to join the werewitch, clobbering a pair of goblins near the front of the formation. Meanwhile, Bailey was a tornado of wrath, wheeling around with her sword, shielding herself with both arcane barrier-matter and electricity. She shifted instantly into her human-sized wolf form to pounce at the last goblin as it tried to flee. In a few more seconds, it was over.

  The girl and the young man stood heaving, and the other four trainees gawked. Bailey stood up, becoming once again a woman in the same motion, and caught their eyes. Shapeshifting always did partial damage to her clothes, but she’d disciplined the ways in which her form altered enough that they still covered her body.

  “Are you well enough to move? We need to get out of the open and into the keep.” She gestured toward the tall secure stone structure at the center of the castle complex.

  The quartet nodded, though one of them looked bad enough that she wasn’t so sure. Remembering what Roland had taught her about healing magic, she cast a wave of soft greenish light on him to relieve his pain and speed up his recovery. Then she led the five across the courtyard and in through the battered and loose-hanging front doors of the central tower.

  Once inside, the trainees collapsed against a tapestry hanging on the left wall of the entranceway. Bailey helped the uninjured man fetch a pail of water and cups for the others.

  While they completed the simple task, the student remarked, “Thank you. I suppose in return for saving us, you want to know what happened.”

  “Yup,” Bailey confirmed. “I do.”